Body Image and Yoga…3 Reasons to Ignore the Mirror!
Happy International Day of Yoga my friends. After one full year of teaching yoga, wow, I can honestly say that my body image has changed, but I still work on it daily! In 2010, you are welcome to use the side search on the blog and read all about that year, but that was the year that everything started to attack me. Autoimmune changed my life…and I don’t know if I will ever really accept it, but I have learned how to control it and that was a huge relief.
That being said, several changes happened to my body during the last 5 years that were not there before. I found out I had fibrocystic breasts, and while it’s never a fun topic, I am linking it to my blog post on what happened that year and how I found out. So I am going to be honest, my body image was not good around the time I came back to yoga due to pain, years of invisible diseases playing a game with me, plus more. In some of my previous posts, I honestly thought I was writing in a positive way as I always laughed at myself; however, going back and reading now, I see that I was not fooling anyone.
I was in severe pain for so long that it was a deep path I had carved into my brain. It was well-worn, so naturally I didn’t notice when my self-esteem went down the same path. Why is it that your friends don’t say the things you need to hear? Don’t be that friend who just lets your friend continue down this path. Set the path on fire so they have to find a new way.
My new path was yoga. Yoga became my saving grace. When my anxiety from the countless doctor’s appointments was high as I waited on new tests, I would go to yoga. At first, I cared what people thought of me in my yoga clothes. I was not able to do all the things other people could…but I went to restorative yoga anyway.
What did I learn from this class? I will tell you lessons that I learned which can’t be taught from a mirror.
3 Reasons to Ignore the Mirror:
- The mirror doesn’t tell you how beautiful you are to other people. This is serious. It reflects back your insecurities. When you look in the mirror, you might see tired eyes, lines, and saggy skin. When your friend sees you do a pose in yoga class for the first time that you have working on for a few months, they see your natural inner beauty. I am telling you I know this to be true. I have witnessed it in my friends who were afraid to come to yoga. You might not even see how you glow, but I do. As your teacher, I send you so much love and light during class. Never once thinking of what you can’t do at all. I have been there my friend.
- The mirror is actually supposed to be a tool. Yup. Just a thing to use for alignment in postures. It is not there to judge us as that’s our job. Do you ever stop in mid-thought and think to yourself “What if my daughter, sister, friend does this to herself?” Would you allow others to speak so badly about themselves as you do in your head? No matter the woman, no matter how you talk to yourself in your head, the answer is always I would never want anyone else to talk to themselves like this. Seriously. Ask a friend. My group of sisters, not related, but from all cultures, meet regularly and we have said this many times.
- The mirror reflects the light around us, but not inside us. Remember that the next time you are not going to yoga class because of how you “look” in the mirror or in yoga clothes or in blah, blah or until you lose x number of pounds. Seriously remember this. Because through yoga, I have learned to steady my mind, open my heart and come back to the breath. If I miss yoga for too long, or don’t go for myself as I am the teacher, ha, if I don’t have that time to do the inner reflection, yes, hell yes, the outer reflection can look ugly to me. I absorb others energy at times and if I don’t get it out through the experience of yoking myself back to the present moment, this breath, this body as Rolf Gates would say, “The real payoff of a yoga practice, I came to see, is not a perfect handstand or a deeper forward bend—it is the newly born self that each day steps off the yoga mat and back into life.”
Each time I leave practice I am whole again my friends. I have then collected all the pieces of my soul that seemed scattered and I feel new again. Come to yoga my friends. The mirror can’t possibly tell you how it feels.
Want to learn new yoga poses in 3 different ways? A break-down of poses for your body? Check out the Head|Heart|Health Club.
Spread awesomeness:
